Sell more with effective online customer service08 November 2005
In order to encourage customers to order or buy from your business website, you need to provide reassurances that your online customer service will meet their requirements.
If you are a 'bricks and mortar' business that is developing it's online presence, it's important to reassure customers that your service to those who buy online is every bit as good as the face-to-face help they may be more familiar with.
And if you're a purely online business, you need to give potential buyers the confidence to order from you in the knowledge that you have a real, live customer service team that will come to their aid if they run into problems.
Getting started
Here are a few issues to consider when developing your online customer service offering.
- Use an autoresponder. This enables you to automatically respond to people who e-mail your business, You'll find the most basic autoresponder in Outlook: click on 'Tools', then 'Out of Office Assistant', to set up a standard reply letting people know you've received their e-mail and will contact them as soon as possible. This simple assistant is useful for when you're away on holiday or if you run a business which depends on speedy responses.
- State your response time. It's frustrating for customers to lodge an enquiry or send an e-mail and then wait for two weeks before getting a response. Decide, in practical terms, how quickly you can respond to queries coming in via your website, then make a promise on your site and stick to it. Whether it's 24 hours or three working days, customers will appreciate having a deadline and will be more likely to use your online enquiry service if they know they are guaranteed as good a response as if they had called you.
- Publish frequently asked questions. By collating a list of the most common troubleshooting questions your customers ask about your products or services, you can provide an instant checklist for customers on your website that saves them the hassle of having to contact you.
- Offer live support. Many businesses now offer 'real-time' support to customers via their websites. There are many sophisticated - and expensive - software packages that enable you to do this, but it can also be achieved through something as simple as an instant messaging facility which a member of staff monitors during working hours, responding to enquiries as they come in. PC World's 'Grown Ups Guide to IM' explains the benefits of messaging for businesses, provides an overview of the best services on the market, and gives some commonsense advice for troubleshooting and security.
If you offer a feedback form on your website, it's also important to let customers know that their suggestions will be seriously considered. Think about producing a news article detailing the top ten customer suggestions each month, and explaining ways in which you intend to action them. Little touches like this will help engender a sense of loyalty among visitors to your website, giving users the reassurance they need to buy from you.
